Comments by "Lawrence D’Oliveiro" (@lawrencedoliveiro9104) on "The Computer Chronicles - Comdex 1987 (1987)" video.

  1. 11:14 Some of those early colour printers did multipass printing. That meant that the paper had to go through the mechanism 3 or 4 times, once for each colour. To ensure that the separate passes were properly aligned, the paper-feed mechanism had to keep a ferociously tight hold on the paper. This meant that paper jams could be fun. If the paper got caught on some internal obstacle, the feed mechanism would not let leave it behind, but would simply rip it to pieces and continue feeding it through.
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  2. 23:41 I remember thinking as much at the time (and telling everybody who would listen): when OS/2 finally shipped, it was a 16-bit OS in a world which was already firmly moving to 32-bit hardware. It was too little, too late.
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  3. 20:24 One area where I think the PostScript clones were still at a disadvantage at this point was over font rendering. Adobe was still keeping its Type 1 font format a secret, along with its special hinting algorithms for minimizing irregularities in glyph placement and shaping at typical resolutions like 300dpi and lower. The clones wouldn’t catch up to that for a few more years.
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  4. 7:11 So IBM was doing the whole patent-protection racket before Microsoft: claim that your patents are being infringed, but never say which ones. Naturally any legal settlements will also keep this information secret.
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